You’ve been patient. The fifth book in George R.R. Martin’s bloody “Song of Ice and Fire,” A Dance with Dragons, hit bookstores shortly after the Game of Thrones TV series started in 2011. Surely, you thought, there’s no way the show will catch up to the books. It couldn’t take Martin…
Ktown Cowboys indicates by its title both insider status and a desire to fit in. Ktown — short for Koreatown — refers to the Los Angeles neighborhood marked by art-deco buildings and Korean signage where the film is set. Though not actually known for cowboys, L.A. has for more than…
When everything’s a game, it’s easier to forget the wrongdoing perpetrated during play. We see this in sports, but we also see it in war, young men and women coping with stress by envisioning their targets as the bad guys in a first-person shooter. In Pablo Trapero’s bleak but occasionally…
This patchy comedy about a cossetted, obnoxious gymnast who has slid deep into sloth in the decade or so since her Olympic triumph gets an occasional laugh from the American ills it sends up: jingoism, the sports-industrial complex, home-schooling, fast-food gluttony. The scattershot jabs pepper the flaccid storyline of the…
New Times picks the best things to do in metro Phoenix from Monday, March 14, to Friday, March 18. Downtempo’s Date with Tempe Phoenix Downtempo Ride takes to the streets on two wheels in search of bike-friendly destinations and perfect Phoenix patios. Downtempo’s Date with Tempe, the latest ride in the…
On Friday, March 11, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed HB 2440, which killed the Roosevelt business improvement district created by the Phoenix City Council on January 20. The district would have taxed property owners in a specified area to fund services beyond those already provided by the City. Ducey had…
El Peezo’s newest public piece — his first in more than a year — depicts GOP front-runner Donald Trump as Jabba the Hutt, and makes an aside to the Trump family’s ancestral name. Peezo, a wheatpaste artist and former New Times Big Brain finalist, hasn’t produced any public work in…
You’d probably never guess which world records were set in Arizona.From the interesting, to the cool, to the just plain weird, we bring you our picks of 10 world records set in Arizona, as verified by Guinness World Records:…
Arizona’s own Analisa Marquez, 26, will appear across your TV/laptop/tablet or whatever preferred screen on Sunday, March 13, as she competes on the Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge reality television program. Now, let’s back up for those who are unaware. Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge is a reality show filmed at…
Each week, we’re recapping the first season of Fuller House, episode by episode. We’re certain this is what Al Gore had envisioned when he invented the Internet. Everywhere you look, nostalgia culture has dug its heels in, promising the kind of reboots that are relatively low-risk and will get its millennial targets…
There’s a long wall running along the south side of Bentley Projects in the Phoenix warehouse district. Topped by barbed wire, it once looked like a stark separation point between the neighborhood it borders and the arts and event venues operated by Bentley Calverley. But now, Calverley says, it feels…
The Brothers Grimsby is a movie for those who thought Kingsman: The Secret Service didn’t go far enough. If all the exploding heads and anal-sex jokes and creative impalements of Matthew Vaughn’s tongue-in-cheek spy thriller didn’t do it for you, rest assured: This time, we get to see British super-agent…
If you’re not watching Showtime’s Shameless, you’re missing out on some of the best, worst, and most awkward sex scenes anywhere on TV. Bad decisions occur in droves, and you’re left cringing more often than not, as nearly every character seems to be prone to ruining any decent relationship that…
Visitors who take a left after walking into a new gallery space in Mesa will encounter iconic images created by William Wegman, an artist renowned for using his own Weimaraners in his compositions. They’re displayed across from Red Vapor for Ripe Strawberries, a 2013 oil-on-panel piece by Phoenix artist Rachel Bess. Nearby,…
On a palm-lined street in a pastoral Tempe neighborhood sits an attractive, split-level home. At first glance, it bears a resemblance to the house inhabited by one of the favorite television families of the 1970s. You know, the one with the lovely lady, the fellow, and the six children? “The…
In one key way, the kinda-maybe sequel 10 Cloverfield Lane might be the purest example yet of the J.J. Abrams house style. Directed by first-timer Dan Trachtenberg but produced by Abrams (Super 8, Lost, Alias, Cloverfield, etc.) the thriller is yet another of the fannish wunderbrand’s mystery boxes, a genre…
“Why did you let me film this?” filmmaker Josh Kriegman incredulously asks Anthony Weiner late in Weiner, a documentary about the former New York congressman’s failed 2013 mayoral run. The disgraced candidate doesn’t have a good answer, but the question hangs over this fascinating film, which plays like it started…
New Times picks the best things to do in metro Phoenix from Friday, March 11, to Sunday, March 13. Stupid Fucking Bird Stray Cat Theatre has roamed a gauntlet of Valley venues this season, preparing for residency at Tempe Center for the Arts starting later this year. Just so you don’t get…
Maybe you’ve wondered how much of what you read on Wikipedia is actually true or wished there was a way to make Wikipedia content more accurate and comprehensive. If the topics near and dear to your heart include art or feminism — or both, then you can help to make…
Frankenstein is, arguably, the greatest of all monsters. There’s a sense in which the very name “Frankenstein,” applied not to the scientist but to his creation, has become virtually a synonym for “monster,” for something created but uncontrollable, something that destroys its maker, something grotesquely out of place in the…
Julie Delpy’s Lolo is a maternal horror film in the guise of a light romantic comedy, and therein lies much of its charm. Delpy plays Violette, a fortysomething single mother who has long soured on dating when, during a getaway in Biarritz, she meets Jean-René (Dany Boon), a loyal, bumbling…
Willful ignorance as a character trait typically evokes annoyance in those who witness it — at least in real life. In many French films, however, a character who’s willfully ignorant is portrayed in the twee manner, encouraging us to believe it is their blissful view of the world we should…
